Shelley's 200 page (+/-20,000 word)
manuscript "A Philosophical View of Reform" was written between
December 1819 and May of 1820 but never finished ending abruptly in
mid-sentence and was first published by T. W. Rolleston in 1920.
A copy in various formats including PDF is available
offsite here: www.archive.org/details/philosophicalvie00shelrich and a
text only version is included on this website
here.
"A Philosophical View of Reform" is
where we first see Shelley's famous argument that "Poets and
philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
Shelley's insights into this
remarkable assertion are found in the prose at the end of his Chapter
One (of three) leading up to his conclusion.
"Such is a slight sketch of the general
condition of the hopes and aspirations of the human race to which
they have been conducted after the obliteration of the Greek
republics by the successful tyranny of Rome, its internal liberty
having been first abolished, and by those miseries and superstitions
consequent upon them, which compelled the human race to begin anew
its difficult and obscure career of producing, according to the forms
of society, the greatest portion of good.
Meanwhile England, the particular
object for the sake of which these general considerations have been
stated on the present occasion, has arrived, like the nations which
surround it, at a crisis in its destiny. The literature of England,
an energetic development of which has ever followed or preceded a
great and free development of the national will, has arisen, as it
were, from a new birth. In spite of that low-thoughted envy which
would underrate, through a fear of comparison with its own
insignificance, the eminence of contemporary merit, it is felt by the
British that this is in intellectual achievements a memorable age,
and we live among such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond
comparison any who have appeared in our nation since its last
struggle for liberty.
For the most unfailing herald, or
companion, or follower, of an universal employment of the sentiments
of a nation to the production of a beneficial change is poetry,
meaning by poetry an intense and impassioned power of communicating
intense and impassioned impressions respecting man and nature.
The persons in whom this power takes
its abode may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature,
have little correspondence with the spirit of good of which it is the
minister. But although they may deny and abjure, they are yet
compelled to serve that which is seated on the throne of their own
soul. And whatever systems they may have professed by support, they
actually advance the interests of Liberty.
It is impossible to read the
productions of our most celebrated writers, whatever may be their
system relating to thought or expression, without being startled by
the electric life which there is in their words. They measure the
circumference or sound the depths of human nature with a
comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit at which they are themselves
perhaps most sincerely astonished, for it is less their own spirit
than the spirit of their age.
They are the priests of an
unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of gigantic shadows which
futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they
conceive not; the trumpet which sings to battle and feels not what it
inspires; the influence which is moved not but moves. Poets and
philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
1819 was a productive year for Shelley who
began or completed a third of his 24 major works including "A
Philosophical View of Reform". Although it took another 100 years
before it would be published, Shelley knew that the big ideas he articulated would
resonate across time and survive as seeds do, hidden below the leaves of
autumn to arise one future spring and act less as an individual's
idea but as a reflection of the age. |
